


change in routine

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: It’s dark; no light from the windows, which means the curtains have been drawn. And eerily quiet. Not the sound of Aoi clacking on her tablet, nor the dim backlight of any of her devices reflecting in the sitting room. No sound of the robot shuffling around cleaning. Nothing.“Aoi?” he says cautiously, fingers fumbling along the wall for the light switch. “Are you home?”No response. He finds the switch.And screams.---Every day, Zaizen Akira goes through the same routine. But Ema is about to change that.





	change in routine

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission piece for arminizewithme! She wanted some domestic hireshipping. Thank you so much for supporting my kitty's recovery, Christina - I hope you enjoy it!!

Zaizen Akira is a man of routine.

Every morning, he wakes at six, makes coffee and breakfast, wakes up Aoi for school, cleans up, checks up on Wall Street’s closing stocks from the night before, goes to work at seven. He spends half an hour replying to emails, goes over reports, attends meetings. Lunch for thirty minutes. More meetings, end of day email and phone inquiries, and, finally, home. The robot greets him, he dismisses it, makes sure Aoi has done her homework, makes dinner, eats dinner, catches up on the Wall Street opening and Nikkei closing, takes a bath, brushes his teeth, goes to bed.

Simple routine, simple life. And he had built it from nothing, this quiet, peaceful life with his sister.

Until the Knights of Hanoi got themselves involved in it, and he’d gotten  _ himself  _ too deep, and now his quiet life has been jeopardized by a bunch of cyber terrorist NEETs, a data-surfing cyber vigilante with a gauche color scheme, and a bounty hunter who is determined to make his life miserable every time he needs her help.

His day starts off normal. Meetings are just as dull, reports just as uniform. There are still hackers to deal with, though they are like annoying flies to Akira, but the main talk of the company is what to do with Playmaker.

Akira is conflicted on what to do with  _ him _ .

He’s still mulling over the list of potential consequences for Playmaker when he gets home, right on time, and makes his way into the apartment. He lifts his hand to dismiss the robot--

\--that is not there.

It’s dark; no light from the windows, which means the curtains have been drawn. And eerily quiet. Not the sound of Aoi clacking on her tablet, nor the dim backlight of any of her devices reflecting in the sitting room. No sound of the robot shuffling around cleaning.  _ Nothing. _

“Aoi?” he says cautiously, fingers fumbling along the wall for the light switch. “Are you home?”

No response. He finds the switch.

And screams.

It’s a brief, strangled scream, because he recognizes the person sitting in his armchair right away and manages to catch himself, but he is so startled that he’s flattened himself against the wall and clutches his pounding chest with his hand.

Ema giggles and swings her legs from over the side of the chair, rising to her feet. “Hi, Akira.”

“Y-wh-whe-wh-h-“

She waits patiently for him to finish stammering out incomplete syllables, until he finally manages to compose an entire sentence.

“Where is my robot?”

Her fake-sweet smile is gone from her face in an instant, replaced by a deeply skeptical frown and a lifted eyebrow. “Really? All the questions you could have tried formatting and you come up with  _ where’s my robot _ ?”

He pushes himself from the wall and straightens his tie, stalking past her with his chin in the air. He pulls the curtains back to allow the soft lights from the streets below to fill the room. “Well?”

She scoffs and jerks her thumb behind her, toward the kitchen. The robot sat unmoving by the wall. “It threatened to call the police so I disabled it.”

“Oh?” Akira wheels around to face her, hands on his hips. “Did you maybe think about the fact that it was going to call the police because you  _ broke into my house?” _

“Please, I hardly ‘broke in.’” Ema rolls her eyes and returns to Akira’s seat, swinging her legs back over the sides of the chair as she pulls a nail file from nowhere and starts doing her nails. “Your security system was depressingly easy to hack.”

“You—“ Akira sputters, reaching for her arm, trying in vain to move her from his seat. “What is  _ so important  _ that you felt it necessary to trespass and wait for me in my living room like—like a serial killer!”

She catches him off guard at that moment, giving him one swift tug as he leans in closer, and he finds himself stumbling until he’s sitting on her lap, and her hand is winding its way through his tie.

“My, my, how forward of you, Akira.”

His voice catches in his throat like he’d swallowed a frog, and since she has a firm grip on his tie, he is unable to free himself in time to avoid his sister walking into the apartment and finding her brother sitting on a woman’s lap in the living room.

It’s never happened before; Akira has never brought a woman home, or even gone out with one, really, so he’d never given any thought to what Aoi might think about it—they’d never talked on the subject of dating or anything  _ not that this situation was anything like that!  _ –but now he gets to see her mildly confused expression as the three of them stare at one another for what might be the longest minute of Akira’s life.

“Hello, Brother,” she says blankly, “hello, Miss Ema.”

“Hello, Aoi.” Akira is aware that his voice sounds about as defeated as he feels.

“Hi, sweetie,” Ema says brightly. “How was your day?”

Aoi shifts her bag from one shoulder to the other and angles her body toward her room. “Fine. I, um, have some… English homework to do.”

Akira finally manages to detach Ema from his tie and climb off her, giving her a stern warning to  _ stay there _ as he follows Aoi to her room, where she has dumped her bag on her bed and sat at her desk.

“Um,” he says, uncomfortably aware that his tie is half-hanging from his neck and three buttons on his jacket have mysteriously unbuttoned themselves. “Ema was just—”

“It’s okay,” Aoi interrupts, opening her workbook. “I’m glad.”

“Er, what?”

She starts writing in neat strokes. “You’ve spent your whole life making sure I’m taken care of, and you’ve forgotten to take care of yourself along the way.”

He’s not entirely sure what she means by this; he gets enough sleep, drinks enough water, and exercises enough. He’s in good health, and now that he’s recovered the position he’d been demoted from during the Hanoi incident, he’s financially stable. But before he can ask her to elaborate, Ema yells from the kitchen.

“Akira! What’s for dinner?”

He scowls. “If you want something, make it yourself!” he yells back.

“This is bad hospitality.”

“You weren’t invited!”

There’s a strange twitch in Aoi’s jaw as she half-shrugs, and  _ now  _ Akira understands what she meant by  _ you’ve forgotten to take care of yourself. _

“Oh—n-no, it’s not like that,” he stammers, “she just… showed up…”

Aoi sets down her pencil and turns to him. “I want you to be happy, Brother.”

A simple misunderstanding, that’s what this is; she walked in at an uncomfortable moment and deduced from what she saw that he and Ema were—

“I am happy,” he says in a strangled voice.

“There’s a difference,” she replies carefully, “between content and happy.”

He hasn’t even begun to parse the differences between the two words when Ema appears at the doorway.

“Hey, so I think we should put some art in the sitting room, it’s pretty dreary in there, what do you think?”

The longest silence of the evening passes and all Akira can manage to break it is a high-pitched “ _ what?” _

“It’s like a hotel lobby, no personality at all. Oh!” She snaps her fingers. “A dog. We should totally get a dog.”

“Okay.” Akira holds up his hands and takes a deep breath. “First of all, if you are including yourself in any of that, then  _ we  _ are not doing anything. Second, we are not getting a dog—”

“Why not?” Aoi asks quietly.

_ Oh my god, is this real?  _ “Neither of us would be home enough to take care of it.”

“That’s what your robot is for,” Ema says helpfully.

“Aoi, say good night to Ema, she needs to go home.”

Ema sputters as Akira drags her out of the room, a timid  _ good night, Miss Ema  _ following them. When they reach the front door, Ema shakes him off.

“I wasn’t kidding about livening it up in here.” She places one hand on her hip as she gestures at the white walls around them with the other. “The right color can really help with mood. And a dog is great for depression—”

“I’m not depressed.”

“I wasn’t talking about you, but since you insist on being completely oblivious to everything that isn’t work, yes you are.”

“Oh?” Akira holds up his hands. “Are you a therapist now?”

“I don’t need to be. You’re unhappy.” She waves at the apartment again. “This entire place has no energy. Aoi can feel it, and I think deep down you know you can feel it, too.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, because she’s right and he refuses to let her know that.

“Anyway, sorry for throwing off your routine. Make your dinner, watch your stock market stuff.” Ema slips her shoes on and opens the door. “You know how to reach me if you need help breaking into SOL again.”

It takes him exactly ten seconds to make a decision and he has to act on it before the rational part of him tells him it’s a bad idea, so he takes a deep breath and wrenches the door open again.

“Hey.” He slips into the hallway after her, reaching into his pocket. “Here.”

Startled, she catches the tiny piece of metal he tosses her way. “A key?”

“Yes.” He steps back into the apartment, hand on the door. “Don’t disable my security system again.”

And he closes the door.

 


End file.
